John Scalzi put up a hell of a blogpost yesterday. Titled “Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is,” it uses a videogame analogy to explain the concept of white male privilege. It’s great stuff. Go read it.
Done? Cool. Because I had a thing or two to say about the comments.
One common theme among Scalzi’s critics is the idea that white guys used to have it good, but affirmative action has put an end to that, and now the deck is stacked in favor of women and people of color. Here’s a snippet of a representative argument (from commenter bpmitche) to that effect:
In the case of academia, for instance, the admittance guidelines often restrict the number of applicants who will be accepted according to their stated race and their declared major.
For instance, let’s say that the Engineering program at Cal Poly is only going to accept 450 students in a given year; of those 450 openings 200 are set aside for whites, 100 for blacks, 100 for hispanics, and 50 for asians. There are also gender standards – let’s be generous and assume that the goal is pairity between admitted student genders. Now, let’s look at our pool of applicants: although Cal Poly gets applicants from all over the country, there are some demographic truths involved here. First, white males will be the overwhelming majority of applicants to the Engineering program, based simply on the racial demographics of the US (wikipedia). Out of any given 1000 applicants to the Engineering program 637 of them will be white, 163 will be hispanic, 122 will be black and 48 will be asian (with a total of 30 “other or mixed”).
Bpmitche goes on from there to report admission rates for various demographic categories to the nearest tenth of a percent. (“as a white male, your chances … are at best 31.8% … for a black male or female, 81.9%; for a hispanic male 61.7%, female 60.9%; and 100% for both asian males and females.”)
Damning, right? There’s only one problem with this analysis. It’s completely made up.
To start, race-based affirmative action in California’s public universities is illegal, and has been since 1996. Under the California state constitution, the state may not consider “race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.” Period. At Cal Poly, admissions officials aren’t even told applicants’ race or gender.
And even outside of California, the kind of quotas this guy describes are illegal nationwide, and have been since the Supreme Court’s 1978 Bakke decision. Since 2003, moreover, it’s been illegal to give college applicants any quantifiable numerical advantage in admissions on the basis of race. (Colleges are still allowed — though not required — to consider a student’s race on a case-by-case basis, for now.)
Bpmitche also errs in assuming that applicants to an elite engineering program will reflect the demographics of the country as a whole. If that were the case — if people of all races and genders were getting the kind of preparation and training that would render them viable candidates for admission to a school like Cal Poly — then any sort of affirmative action would of course be absurd. But they’re not.
Finally, there’s the issue of Cal Poly’s engineering school’s demographics, perhaps the simplest relevant fact to uncover. Bpmitche estimates that about 45% of the school’s students are white, while the true number is above 60%. He figures the school’s Latino enrollment at 22%, when in fact it’s just 13%. And black students, who bpmitche likewise estimates at 22% of the school’s enrollment, amount to just 0.9% — just 47 students in a school of more than five thousand.
And this, ultimately, is why folks like bpmitche think they’re oppressed.
It’s because they have literally no idea what the facts are.
studentactivism.net 
20 comments
Comments feed for this article
May 16, 2012 at 8:45 pm
John
I was going to post on the other page, but since there are already 800+ comments I know it would just get lost in the mess, so I thought to comment here. I think Scalzi’s blog and comment is pretty accurate, but I think it oversimplifies things in a way. I guess I’ll also start out by saying I am a straight white male (SWM), but I consider myself a very progressive person, with plenty of anti oppression training, and fully understand the privilege I have received as a straight white male.
I do agree for the most part that being a SWM is starting life on the easiest difficulty setting, but this oversimplifies our society. Like I said before, I know SWM’s have a certain privilege that many groups of society do not benefit from, but these are not the only factors that make up who a person is, or how “challenging” their life will be. With an easy extension to the gaming analogy, and a comment said multiple times on the other post, yes SWM may have a lighter difficulty setting for the game, but there are plenty of other stats, situations and paths any gamer or person must go down. Doesn’t a character or person have a significant bonus if they have wealth or money? Surely you agree that social class is a major hurdle and barrier people face today. So why is a SWM necessarily going to have an “easier” life then a rich person of color? Does the poor white person living in a trailer in Louisiana necessarily have an “easier difficulty setting” then a rich child to two african american parents in the north east? I don’t think it’s fair to group all SWM into this one category and say hey you’re life is easier no matter what. Yes there are privileges, but it doesn’t matter what your race, gender or sexuality is, a broken household with drugs in the family makes any persons life difficult. (Fully aware median income is higher on average for white people). What about religion? Is a SWM only easiest if they are Christian? What if they are Jewish or Muslim? Heck even atheists, if atheists had the scarlet A across their chest, they would in fact be the most disliked group in America. And what about obstacles in life? I know this article talked about starting the game or life, but it tells people they are in that box for life, and nothing they do can change that. It denies our abilities as individuals to create our own destiny, and suffer our own consequences or benefits we create.
I know I am throwing out a bunch of hypotheticals, and the article was written to highlight an overall issue that many people may not be so aware of or realize. But my point is that grouping people into one box or category just because of characteristics of which they had no part in choosing is not fair. SWM’s should be cognizant of their privilege, and I personally work to bridge barriers and help others, but labeling people into boxes only takes us so far. If the goal is equality, and seeing beyond physical immutable characteristics we have to stop simplifying things like this, and labeling people without any sort of further knowledge about them. Presuming an opinion on someone based on their gender, race, and sexual orientation before knowing a word about them only proves that we are still judging people based on their race, sex, and gender. It is doing the very thing we are trying to stop, of judging people on things they cannot control.
So let’s talk about the issues in our society, let’s talk about how to build a stronger community that promotes equality, and let’s talk about privilege and how it works in the world. But let’s stop judging people based on things they can’t control and forcing people into boxes. We should be breaking down barriers, not reinforcing them.
May 16, 2012 at 8:50 pm
streamweaver
Are these our only two choices? Oppressed or Marginalized? Could it be that we’re people with as wide a range of human experiences as anyone else?
May 16, 2012 at 9:03 pm
Angus Johnston
Saying that, all other things being equal, being a guy generally gives you certain advantages in America isn’t “presuming an opinion” about guys, nor is it “judging” guys. It’s just making a factual assertion, one that you apparently agree with. So what’s the problem?
As for the stuff about wealth and religion and disability and so on, Scalzi addresses it in his piece, and again a bunch of times in the comments thread. Nobody’s arguing that whiteness trumps poverty, or anything like that, so it’s not clear to me why the “BUT CLASS!” rejoinder keeps cropping up.
Finally, I’m all for breaking down barriers, and I don’t see how anything I’ve said here contradicts that. If we’re going to get past racism, we need to understand how race actually operates, don’t we?
May 16, 2012 at 9:30 pm
pnielsenhayden
I’d like to point out that Scalzi is himself a SWM who grew up in poverty, so it’s not like he’s unaware that individual SWMs can have problems.
May 16, 2012 at 9:39 pm
John
The problem is it is grouping every straight white male into a group and saying hey these guys have it easiest, under all circumstances. Why is that fair to them? Don’t they have struggles too? (please don’t think I am making light of ANY struggles other groups face). It judges people based on the same characteristics liberals try to claim they don’t use to classify people.
I think class keeps coming up because lots of white people don’t necessarily see that they have personally gained from being white. Obama directly said that line in his – a more perfect union speech. Not saying I totally agree with it, but I can see the argument. It sends the message that a hispanic person can have it rough, but a white person can’t. And class is a huge part of the issues in our country. Of course we are not a race-neutral society yet, but as you well know, income inequality is a massive issue today. This argument downgrades economic struggles, and forces it back to tight compartments to put people in. Scalzi did address it, but it was merely a brush off, and I don’t think he gives it the discussion it needs.
I wasn’t directly addressing this singular blog post of yours (though I do think it is easy to pick one clearly wrong response and tear it apart, but then extend that view to all of “them”, just saying), but Scalzi’s comment, and this liberal mindset in general. I am a liberal guy, but I hate when liberal people try to claim this high and mighty self righteous view that they are oh so tolerant, supportive of equality, yet turn around and say hey, you straight white male, dont complain because you’re life is easy. That’s still a racist, sexist thought because it is judging people and forming an opinion of them based on those characteristics they did not choose. I’m not sure what you mean by that last line but yes we need to see how it operates, and more people should be aware of the problems our country still has.
May 16, 2012 at 9:51 pm
Angus Johnston
The problem is it is grouping every straight white male into a group and saying hey these guys have it easiest, under all circumstances.
Nobody’s made that claim here. Not me, not Scalzi, not any of the commenters I read. Show me where someone’s made that claim, and I’ll repudiate it.
I think class keeps coming up because lots of white people don’t necessarily see that they have personally gained from being white.
Whereas this is a very different argument, and one that I’m happy to engage with. Because white people do benefit from being white, in all sorts of ways. And many of those ways are mostly invisible to lots of white folks. (For starters, every time you interact with a racist, you’ve got a leg up if that racist is of your race.) The number of straight white guys who can legitimately claim that their lives would have been, on balance, easier if they’d been born to the same class, same religion, same family, same abilities, but as a lesbian of color? I don’t know what the number is, but it’s not “lots.”
This argument downgrades economic struggles, and forces it back to tight compartments to put people in. Scalzi did address it, but it was merely a brush off, and I don’t think he gives it the discussion it needs.
He didn’t brush it off, he dispatched it. He acknowledged its importance, quickly, so that he could return to the topic at hand. There’s nothing wrong with talking about class, as Scalzi would agree. But class wasn’t the subject of his essay.
I hate when liberal people try to claim this high and mighty self righteous view that they are oh so tolerant, supportive of equality, yet turn around and say hey, you straight white male, dont complain because you’re life is easy. That’s still a racist, sexist thought because it is judging people and forming an opinion of them based on those characteristics they did not choose.
Again. I didn’t say that. Scalzi didn’t say that. So how is that complaint relevant to my piece or his?
May 16, 2012 at 11:30 pm
Mishell Baker (@mishellbaker)
No one is saying life is easy for SWMs. Just that it isn’t quite AS hard in many respects. Life is hard, period, and if you succeed you should be proud. Just know that you had a few things in your favor that others do not, and what things those are, so you do not end up looking/sounding as though you’re in deep, defensive denial.
May 16, 2012 at 11:36 pm
John Arkwright
If we systematically discriminate in favor of men, then how is it that young women now earn more than young men? Are they just better? My answer is “yes.” In the past, men were more educated and better behaved in the workplace. Now women are better workers and they’re out-earning men. As it says below, women are most ahead of men in earnings in the southern bastion of Atlanta.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704421104575463790770831192.html
Quote: In 2008, single, childless women between ages 22 and 30 were earning more than their male counterparts in most U.S. cities, with incomes that were 8% greater on average, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data released Wednesday by Reach Advisors, a consumer-research firm in Slingerlands, N.Y.
Quote: The trend was first identified several years ago in the country’s biggest cities, but has broadened out to smaller locales and across more industries. Beyond major cities such as San Francisco and New York, the income imbalance is pronounced in blue-collar hubs and the fast-growing metro areas that have large immigrant populations. The greatest disparity is in Atlanta, where young, childless women were paid 121% the level of their male counterparts, according to Reach Advisors.
May 17, 2012 at 1:08 am
Angus Johnston
There’s a word for that kind of statistical analysis, John. It’s “cherry-picking.” It’s not true that “young women now earn more than young men” in the US — it’s true of some urban areas when you exclude people with children, but it’s not true overall.
May 17, 2012 at 9:15 am
Another Halocene Human
Here’s the problem with the “but class”!!!! Markers of class status can be systemically eliminated. Factors which are associated with but not 1:1 with social class, such as family violence, domestic abuse, or things that cut across class, brain or social disorders, religious cult participation, may have a lingering effect on material success that overwhelm class. However, class is associated with things like quality of education, nutrition in early childhood, things that are very important later. Those things are on the inside. Appearance is on the outside. A black person cannot, except by interacting with people in a non-face-to-face medium, such as telephone or anonymous online comments, erase the fact of her blackness. And she will be judged on this before any other factor comes into play. Since the managers and supervisors are disproportionately white, is it really surprising that they will take a chance on someone like them while maybe passing over a qualified applicant when jobs are scarce that they have subconsciously rejected?
Or if both are hired, they mentor the one who they share a bunch of interests with, hang out with after work, and set that person up for a promotion, even though the other applicant actually came in with better prior experience and education?
This kind of stuff really happens. Not all managers are like this, but unconscious bias is quite common… and hey, the people who do this don’t even realize it because it’s unconscious.
The people in power are white male so the landscape is biased towards white males. Even when they have been shorted as Scalzi said on other points, even when because of this they do find some doors closed, they will find many more safe havens than other players in the game. The worst thing is that they don’t even realize this is happening. Too easy to pretend that you got that job because you’re worthy. Too much self-esteem wrapped up in material success in our society, not enough in character.
May 17, 2012 at 1:37 pm
Hellianne
Angus, you said, “Nobody’s arguing that whiteness trumps poverty, or anything like that, so it’s not clear to me why the “BUT CLASS!” rejoinder keeps cropping up.”
I think I can give a reason for the focus on class: It’s because the number of otherwise privileged people who have been hit by the current economic crisis has reached critical mass. They can now look around and see a lot of people like them (generally educated, straight, white men from a middle-class or higher family) who have recently acquired a set of related characteristics– poverty, unemployment, student loan debt– that have put them at a disadvantage. They notice the class marker because they’d grown up with the assumption that getting a college degree necessarily leads to a well-paying, satisfying job with good advancement prospects. And in the past, they pretty much could count on that– in part, because they DON’T face the issues that hinder people who are LGBTQI, POC, women, undereducated, disabled, mentally ill, from an historically poor family, etc.
The otherwise privileged people who now have their shiny new label of “class underprivileged” see class as the single most important factor because it’s the only axis of oppression that directly affects the large majority of them. Therefore, they feel that if we can fix the class problem, that will fix all the other problems.
And yes, class is an important factor, and yes, being below middle class is definitely a marginalized identity, and yes, it’s wrong that people in this group face additional challenges, and yes, we should aim to fix that.
But the idea that that is THE overarching problem seems to me to be an oversimplification of the fact that class privilege is one of very few privileges that SWMs can lose. Being able-bodied is another example, but it’s not something that happens on as large a scale as the recent loss of class privilege, nor were most people raised to believe that they would always have full use of their limbs or senses. And frankly, SWMs don’t have to worry that some outside force will turn them gay or black or female.
I’d like to ask SWMs who are focusing on class to think very carefully about why you think class is the central issue. Because when you say these things, your words come across as trying to center all efforts at equality on YOUR issue.
You seem not to have noticed something important: A person’s class and economic privilege is very often an EFFECT of the accumulated set of privileged and marginalized identities that zie has. Every way in which you are privileged increases your chances of being upper class. Every way in which you are marginalized increases your changes of living poverty. If the only marginalized identity you have is poverty, then sure, addressing only class divisions will help– but it will pretty much only help you and people like you. All the other marginalized groups will stay in the lower class until the people who have the power stop oppressing them. And ending that oppression– for ALL marginalized groups– is the mission of intersectional social justice, and I’m fairly confident that that’s the context for Scalzi’s metaphor.
May 18, 2012 at 12:03 pm
Iris
Hellianne: What a clear and convincing argument you present. It helped me understand a lot about the SWM posters both here and on the original thread. Thanks.
May 18, 2012 at 5:14 pm
nonviolentconflict
Reblogged this on NonviolentConflict.
May 19, 2012 at 1:24 am
Courtney
Whenever I hear the “but CLASS!” argument, I am reminded of a speech by Tim Wise from last year, where he talks about how SWMs who were born to middle class or higher economic status were uniquely unprepared for the economic meltdown, precisely because of their privilege. It boils down to their privilege allowing them to believe our cultural narratives of meritocracy that if you work hard and do “what you are supposed to do,” that you will be successful. Anyone who grew up on the “other” side of an axis of oppression learned that was a lie a children.
The video is about 11 minutes long, but it’s worth watching.
http://www.timwise.org/2011/04/tim-wise-at-first-church-of-boston-april-20-2011-beached-white-males-and-the-pathology-of-privilege/
May 19, 2012 at 3:29 am
Oppressed White Guys Blogging | FavStocks
[…] Like John Scalzi Says, White Straight Male Is Life’s Easiest Difficulty Setting. So Why Do White G…: John Scalzi put up a hell of a blogpost yesterday. Titled “Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is”…. Go read it. Done? Cool. Because I had a thing or two to say about the comments. […]
May 20, 2012 at 1:48 pm
Frank Moraes
People seem to have a problem with statistics. I think we would all agree that a rich straight white man born without arms and legs has it harder than a man whose only disadvantage is to be born black. But if asked before being born if you would rather be a straight white guy or a black lesbian, you wouldn’t pick the latter if you wanted success in the mainstream of society. It really doesn’t matter what you pile on top of that–Disabled? Poor? An outrageous fashion sense?–it all comes out the same. No one said “straight white male” trumps everything else. Personally, I’d rather be black and rich rather than white and poor, but that isn’t the issue.
July 13, 2012 at 4:39 am
Midas
Of course the poor red neck is left out to dry again and still remains the butt of Poltically correct jokes and a convenient Voiceless scape goat. Poor white trash. Which is actually the highest level of difficulty beside non english speaking mexicans(and atleast they have there defenders)
Blacks who may have it worse is because they created a culture in which being a Thug is Cool. Tu Pac The Jesus of the Hood.
But I could go on all week. Bottom line is that there are a Billion Black Programs(funded by Taxes) A Zillion Black places to go and be black till your hearts content. Thousands of Churches with a Racial Name attached to it. And this is concederd Fine and Dandy. But when the Poor dumb hicks join white groups. Mainly because they live in bad hoods and are the victim of an Outrageous amount of Black on White Crime( the stats are truly Horrifying) You see how hate begets hate and so on.
The Fact that Scalzi ignored Class when that has always been the issue. Even in the Slavery Days. Both Whites and Blacks were slaves in Mexico until it got to be to much trouble(therefore costing to much) and they had to free the whites as they were not going to have it.
Oh did I mention I understand there is and was racisim(you poor smucks) That shit has been force fed down our throats and they have tried to force white guilt on us. to a point where you have many liberals who think that they are the Black Champion.(Not that they would walk in their hood but hes still there for them(on the phone maybe)
This is more of the Oh your not responsible for what you do as your a victim bs.
Fact is, this is the best place in the world for black people. It sure the hell isn’t Africa.
I know, you dont like that. Well White sometimes is the lowest setting of getting Reality.
Some people can afford this attitude(as they are safe and like to think better of themselves. and its hard to think of yourself as special when there are almost 300 million of you everywhere. So they set themselfs apart by pretending to be not like the 300 million and for the little guy. the poor black child who needs help from the Great Waldo.
This stuff sickens me. And is Conter Productive. If you morons wants to pretend Racism is something new we havent talked about more then any fucking issue other then the Weather then you need to get a life.
Signed. Kiss my poor ass once in a while.
September 8, 2012 at 12:56 am
Joe Public
I’m a white kid, and I go to a mostly black community college with mostly black teachers, and I’m sick of having all this talk about “slavery, the white man, white privilage blah blah blah” shoved down my throat every day. At first, I brush it off, but I hear about it so much that I finally actually begin to think that I’m a worthless, soulless human being, even though my ancestors were starving to death while Africans were being enslaved in America. It’s a slow but sure process of brainwashing that drains my self-esteem and makes me believe I’m somehow an ‘oppressor’ even though I work two jobs to get by. That’s all I have to say.
September 8, 2012 at 10:34 am
Angus Johnston
Well, Joe, you’re either getting really lousy instruction in your history classes or you’re not paying much attention. Possibly both.
Structural racism in American society is only attenuatedly connected to slavery, for starters. If we’d followed through on — and built on — the promise of Reconstruction instead of allowing it to collapse and replacing it with another nine decades of legal white supremacy, we’d be in a lot better shape now.
And since your comment doesn’t address any of the specific points either I or Scalzi made, I’ll leave it there. If you’ve got thoughts on that stuff let me know.
July 22, 2014 at 4:26 am
WNP
You Angus are the racist and it seems to me you are the one with a problem understanding logic.